China Policy Journal Volume 1, Number 2, Fall 2019 | Page 22

Chinese Foreign Policy Think Tanks’ Policy Influence
ership felt overly pressed by excessively
chaotic and complex internal and external
situations that developed beyond its
capacity to maintain an efficient control
for extracting resources from below, it
delegated decision-making power, including
the power to take decisions on
specific foreign policy-related issues of
technical nature, to provincial and even
below-provincial level. (Cao, 2011;
Chung, 2000; Landry 2008) Then the
horizontal fragmentation became more
prominent along the executive levels, as
the black-lined boxes indicated in Figure
3. In this way, “stove-piping” mechanism
would be substantially weakened.
More information, resources, and
power would flow downward to provincial
actors, and the leadership of provincial
party and government’s apparatus
over provincial think tanks would
be strengthened. Under such circumstances,
provincial think tanks might
obtain more resources and information
horizontally from provincial leadership
and consequently, their policy influence
would be strengthened in comparison
to central-level think tanks. On the other
hand, whenever the top leaders felt
confident enough to establish a strong
domination, or feared a potential unraveling
of its control over provinces, it
might retrieve the previously delegated
power and shifted to recentralization,
building up a momentum for vertical
fragmentation, as is shown in the dotted-lined
boxes in Figure 3. Under such
circumstances, “stove-piping” would
be strengthened, and the differentiated
positions of central and provincial
think tanks would get more and more
aggravated.
Figure 3: The Horizontal and Vertical Fragmentation of China’s Policymaking
In general, both vertical and
horizontal fragmentation coexist at
any specific time spot and form a crisscrossed
complex “labyrinth” of policymaking
and policy influence. The dynamic
of vertical fragmentation shapes
the “stove-piping” because it drives the
division of power and resources along
functional competence of ministerial
system. Meanwhile, the dynamic of
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